A Method for the Construction of Minimum-Redundancy Codes
David A. Huffman · with the entropy bound from Claude E. Shannon, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”
Common letters get short nicknames, rare letters get long ones.
Common letters get short codes, rare letters get long ones, so the message gets smaller.
- Read the math: optimal prefix codes, entropy as the floor.
- Write it as code: a priority merge, then walk the tree for codes.
- Simulate and check: every code is prefix-free and decodes back; bits never dip under the entropy line.






























